Tag Archives: family

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Sarah, Video

Du Nord 2025

June 21, 2025 Andrew Leave a comment

Last week, we managed to fit a glorious trip to Camp du Nord into our busy summer. This was our fifth visit to their summer program (see prior posts from 2023, 2021, 2019, and 2016), though we also stayed in a cabin there in January 2024.

Camp du Nord is at the tip of the turquoise arrow, about 15 miles from the Canadian border.

We stayed in one of the original cabins, built in the 1930s, called Sans Souci. It was a tiny one-room cottage perched on some rocks on the shore of Burntside Lake. The cabin itself had a single full-size bed. Next to the cabin (but oddly out of frame in all of our photos) is a spacious platform tent with two twin beds.

How did a family of five manage this? Well, Griffin was only with us for the first night. On Monday we drove him and his gear over to Camp Widjiwagan, just a few miles east, where he’s embarking on a three week canoe trip into Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. We missed his lively presence for the rest of the week.

The week included a traditional “polar plunge” into the lake first thing in the morning with dozens of other families. (It’s something of a ritual to start the day… and quite refreshing, especially in the absence of showers. Note that despite the name, the water isn’t especially cold. We have all successfully survived real polar plunges into this same lake through holes in the ice in the winter.)

Maggie and Oliver joined their age groups for activities in the mornings. Sarah and I relaxed, read books, played cards, and walked in the beautiful northern woods. In the afternoons and evenings we went swimming, did art activities, enjoyed the beautiful wood-fired sauna, and played games. The week wrapped up with hilarious skits on the stage by the lakeshore.

On our final night, we experienced a phenomenal thunderstorm. There’s nothing quite like being in a tiny cabin on the short of a lake while mother nature howls in fury overhead. (Come to think of it, Griffin was probably in a pitched tent during the storm… I look forward to hearing his take!) We learned on Saturday that the storms were even worse west of us with tornadoes in North Dakota and 100+ mph wind gusts in Bemidji (about 100 miles from us).

In the pictures below, Maggie is usually wearing her purple hat.

Andrew awoke early on Wednesday morning and took this panoramic video from the rock below our cabin at 4:30 a.m. This was two days before the solstice. You can hear those “early birds” getting their day started.

Andrew, Photo

Father’s Day With Frog and Toad

June 16, 2024 Andrew Leave a comment

As a Father’s Day treat, we attended A Year With Frog and Toad at the Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis. It was a fantastic performance of the Arnold Lobel classic. If I could have only one children’s author with me on my desert island, it would be Lobel.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Photo, Sarah, Travel

Saint Louis Wedding

October 9, 2023 Andrew Leave a comment

We drove down to Saint Louis to attend Clay and Meghan’s lovely wedding. Everyone found new fancy outfits for the occasion. Oliver’s was the talk of the town.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Sarah

Du Nord 2023

June 26, 2023 Andrew Leave a comment

We spent the third week of June up at Camp Du Nord. It was our fourth visit to this amazing family camp on the edge of the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota. We eschewed our tech gadgets on this trip, so we didn’t take many pictures. But it was a fabulous week of hiking, swimming, canoeing, kayaking, enjoying the arts and crafts options, and playing lots of games on our cabin’s lovely screen porch. And we appreciated, of course, the wood fired sauna with a ramp leading directly into the cool lake—the perfect way to feel refreshed at the end of a hard-working day.

The family in front of Burntside Lake and Blueberry Island.

For the second or third time, we got our camp reservations with the Brown family. We met them when Griffin and Gabe were in ECFE together when we first moved to Minnesota. All three kids are in the same age groups as ours, so they have a lot of fun together. (There were multiple sleepovers and late-night games.)

The Browns—our favorite camp companions.

I always like to include a map or two because maps are cool. Obviously. This is a topo map scaled at about 8 meters per pixel (at full resolution… click on it). Camp Du Nord is along the north shore of the North Arm of Burntside Lake, north and east of the “Birch Bay” label. Sarah and I hiked out toward the pink lake on the northwest side of the map (around the red 33). Griffin’s age group canoed south into the channel that connects to the larger lake. They portaged from the channel to Chant Lake and then swam out to a small island there. (My borrowed sunglasses may still be wedged in a crevice on that island.)

Google terrain map of approximately the same extent.

As with our last visit, inkle weaving was a popular pastime for Griffin, Maggie, and Sarah. Sarah is, in fact, considering making her own inkle loom for home use.

Products of the inkle loom: Griffin, Maggie, and Sarah respectively from left to right.

One of the daily activities for the kids is called “Nature Notes.” They gather at 9:00 AM, before regular activities, and learn about the ecosystem around the camp. On the first day, Oliver received a “Plant Passport” with sketches of different local plants that he could try to spot in the wild. (I may have been more excited by this challenge than he was.) In the end we were able to check off all but one of the plants. We’re pretty sure that we saw that last plant, too, but it wasn’t blooming so we weren’t 100% sure. The most exciting find, especially during this hot, dry week, was a sundew that we found on a walk through a bog.

Sundew, a type of carnivorous plant that catches
passing insects with its sticky droplets of “dew.”

As a nerdy aside, my first encounter with a sundew was in the 1980 D&D adventure, Slave Pits of the Undercity. In the adventure, naturally, characters encounter a giant variety that happily gorges itself on human-sized prey; barrels of vinegar from a nearby storeroom were required to dissolve its glue. I was surprised to learn, many years later, that sundews are both real and relatively petite.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo, Sarah

Roy Virtual Gathering

August 28, 2021 Andrew Leave a comment

I found this screenshot while cleaning up my computer today. It’s from a Roy virtual get-together on March 14, 2021. Some of us were having fun with virtual backgrounds.

It’s odd to think that in the five+ months since this shot was taken, two of the three Roy-boy families have moved into new homes.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Sarah

Virtual Family

March 22, 2020 Sarah Leave a comment

Our new way of connecting with family in Oregon, Washington, and Southern Minnesota: Yahtzee on Google Meet/Hangouts and FaceTime. We learned a few things about cameras and scoresheets and the importance of seeing the dice when we’re playing, and it was so nice to connect in a way we’re used to doing in person. I predict many more creative solutions to come ❤️

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie

Art Challenges

February 4, 2018 Andrew Leave a comment

In the evenings at our house, in those interminable minutes while we try to finish preparing dinner, the two older kids are often “bored” and don’t know what to do with themselves. Recently, Griffin shuffled into the kitchen and asked me forlornly, “Daddy, what can I do right now?” He wasn’t asking, “How can I help?” No, this was a bitter expression of hopelessness in the face of far too few minutes of screen time.

I usually reply with something snarky like, “Go stare at a wall!” (Never very effective, but surprisingly satisfying.) Last week, however, I came up with something new. Perhaps a parenting lesson from ECFE finally sank in. Or maybe it arose from the fact that I was facilitating an immersive “design thinking” week at school. Instead of snark or exasperation, I said, “YES! Quick, get a piece of paper and a pen. Draw a shape that represents you in a color that represents your mood!” (I was riffing off of an icebreaker from a recent workshop.) Startled by my specificity, Griffin immediately went to his desk and did it, coming back with a multicolored blob that included a variety of emotions (including “hungry” and “bored,” but also some positive ones). Then he asked for another “art challenge.” And I heard the distant sound of angels singing.

Art challenges have become a fun new activity to keep the gremlins of our witching hour at bay. Maggie, of course, joined in too. Below are a couple of examples of their responses to my challenges from the last few days.

I’m not deluded enough to imagine that this will work forever, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts. And I do love watching their artwork evolve.

Andrew, Griffin, Maggie, Photo, Sarah

Yellow Cabin – Summer 2016

August 8, 2016 Andrew Leave a comment

Another lovely summer weekend at the cabin. The water was warm so we spent much of our time on or in the water. Many highlights of this trip escaped digital capture, including seeing young otters playing by the shore, a few sightings of a belted kingfisher, and a bizarre close encounter with a meditating cormorant (who remained standing on a sunken log unperturbed by Griffin approaching nearly within arm’s reach). Plus Daddy capsizing and emerging from the lake covered in muck. And a humongous man-eating water tarantula (that’s its scientific name) on the dock.

But we did manage to get a few shots. Click below for larger versions.

Griffin

Not Quite as Bad

October 28, 2015 Andrew Leave a comment

Donald Trump came up tonight during an eclectic dinner conversation, mostly between Sarah and me, but including various spawn-sponsored tangents. I don’t remember what we were saying precisely, but it wasn’t flattering. This piqued Griffin’s interest, of course, so he started asking questions about this Trump character. Both Sarah and I backpedaled off our most colorful aspersions — “ok, maybe he’s not a total idiot,” “he just likes to say ridiculous things,” “we just don’t agree with him about anything” — which only made Griffin more interested. (We usually keep the trash talk out of earshot.)

Suddenly, a look of understanding crosses Griffin’s face, and he says, “Ohhhh! He’s that guy… um, that really bad guy.”

“Which guy?”

“That bad guy. The one we learned about.”

“Where did we learn about him?”

“At the u-boat exhibit in Chicago.”

“Oh … wait … Hitler?”

“Yeah! Hitler!”

<between gasps of appalled laughter> “No, honey, Trump is not as bad as Hitler.”

Griffin, Maggie, Photo, Travel

Bethesda

June 22, 2015 Andrew Leave a comment

We scheduled our Bethesda segment with my parents primarily to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday and originally planned to stay for five or six days and then do some Appalachian camping on our way north to Ithaca. As it turned out, we needed all the time we could get for some family R&R.

Shortly after our arrival, Sarah was stricken with strep throat and Maggie had an infected finger, requiring multiple trips to urgent care. I was fighting a cold (we feared it might be strep, but I dodged that bullet) and my poor dad was hit with a powerful cold as well. But it was the perfect place to curl up and lick our wounds. The kids love it there and adore their grandparents. (One of my favorite moments of the trip was when Maggie refused to follow us downstairs for dinner, stating firmly, while sitting at the top of the stairs, “I want to wait for Grandpa!”)

Despite all of the illnesses, we did manage to get out with the kids a fair amount. The pictures below make it look like all we did was romp around, but really we just never took out the camera when we were convalescing.